


The last taste of sweets, is sweetest last

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Fluff, Friendship/Love, Humor, Male-Female Friendship, Snacks & Snack Food
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-09
Updated: 2017-06-09
Packaged: 2018-11-12 04:13:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 986
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11154009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: They'd agreed to meet by 11 am, so they could reach the mountains before sunset.





	The last taste of sweets, is sweetest last

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tvsn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tvsn/gifts).



“This was…necessary?” Jed asked, peering into the trunk of the car. He had expected to see sleeping bags and backpacks, the collection of canvas and tubing that would miraculously become tents as long as he had absolutely nothing to do with them, some pillows. Maybe lanterns and a vintage 90s boom box and at least two neatly labeled first aid kits. He glanced over at Mary again, the angel on his shoulder wondering if he should have left well enough alone, the devil smirking and mouthing _Fuck it_. He listened to the devil, he always did.

“I mean, did you leave any snack food behind? In the greater tri-state area?” he said, gesturing grandly to the array of boxes and tubes and ziplocked-for-freshness bags that filled the final third of the hatchback. He’d teased Mary before about not being able to see through the back windshield because of the absolute plastering of social activism stickers (though he did always like a footed fish with Darwin printed inside, he couldn’t lie), but he couldn’t imagine how anyone driving could manage to glimpse the car behind them through the fortress of Pop-Tarts and family size Twizzlers.

“Ha ha, Jed. You were not the one detailed to the market with Anne and Clay,” Mary retorted. It was a slightly different tone than the one she used when he was trying to weasel out of a surgery consult, more playful and somehow more exasperated. She even tossed her head at the end, which made her ponytail bounce enticingly. They hadn’t yet left on this team-building camping trip and already, he was losing the tenuous control he had over his response to her. He tried to channel all his irritation, returning to the moment he’d had to honk the horn a third time outside of Anne’s apartment building.

“No. I got to spend the morning with shitty Byron, dealing with gas canisters and propane. And I didn’t get to set him on fire, not even a little,” he said. The vision of flames had been a calming one and he’d returned to it repeatedly as Byron had droned on and on. _Some say the world will end in fire…_ had never been so soothing.

“Whatever. You had Samuel,” Mary said, unable to keep the fondness from her voice just mentioning her friend. Her friend, Jed reminded herself, nothing else, though they made what his great-aunt Lucinda would have called “a handsome couple” if she had not been a miserable, mean-spirited racist. Sam had dealt with Byron before they’d all had coffee, somehow tolerating Byron’s monologue about how undervalued vaudeville was, and kept Jed from committing a variety of crimes. He’d convinced Byron to just sing along with Pandora and since Byron could really sing and Jed and Sam could both carry a tune, the return trip had been nearly pleasant. Though that might have been the fumes.

“Like you weren’t texting Emma and Char the whole time,” Jed replied. She would have managed it while she pushed the cart, watching Anne sashay around the grocery store as if Anna Wintour might appear, Clay examining fruit in an increasingly creepy way. She’d definitely had the worst of it, but he wasn’t ready to admit that yet.

“You should be glad I did. Clay wanted 27 boxes of Hamburger Helper—I managed to get him to put most of them back because Emma said she was allergic to them,” Mary said.

“Is she really?”

“No, of course not. But it worked,” she said, giving him a satisfied smile. Did she know what it did to him? Did she care?

“And to answer your question, we did not buy any beef or buffalo jerky and I remembered your rant about Pringles, but everybody loves Pop-Tarts, especially the brown sugar ones, and you can’t have a camping trip without Cool Ranch Doritos and gummi-worms,” she added.

“Well, I guess we’re going camping then, because I see three super-sized bags of Cool Ranch. Tell me you got stuff to make s’mores though. That’s my favorite part,” Jed said. It always had been when he was a kid, sitting around the campfire with his unusally relaxed parents, watching the marshmallow carbonize and the Hershey’s square slip from its corners, slapping the finishing graham cracker on top and them cramming the first one into his mouth, laughing as his brother Ezra did the same. It might not be true anymore though; could even the most perfectly made s’more compare with seeing Mary in the moonlight, in the firelight, watching her lick the sticky sugar from her lips, sidling closer as the woods rustled around them, just dangerous enough?

“What do you take me for? A camping trip without s’mores? What would be the point?” she exclaimed theatrically, mimicking Anne’s perpetual Sarah Bernhardt delivery enough to make him chuckle, gesturing wildly enough he was able to grab her hand lightly and squeeze it, just a little.

“I shouldn’t have doubted you,” he said and she squeezed his hand back.

“No, you shouldn’t,” she began, her voice softer, richer than he could remember, the look she gave him a promise.

“Shotgun! I call shotgun!” Byron shouted, running as if followed by the hounds of hell, skidding to a stop just inches from them. Mary dropped Jed’s hand, startled by the noise, the arrival of the ginger menace surely a harbinger for Anne and Clay, but she looked sorry about it and that was a small consolation, like the lingering sensation of her palm against his.

“Fine, Byron. You can ride with me. Mary’s car is full,” Sam announced, having appeared as if deposited by a generous God, but probably after parking down the street in a metered spot. Jed didn’t care—Sam had saved the day once again. Jed resolved to look for a way to do Sam a favor, even if it meant giving him the last s’more.

**Author's Note:**

> This was for tvsn who wanting a fluffy fic about snack-food and I could only really oblige her in Mercy Street, though I know she is a huge Turn fan. 
> 
> The title is from Shakespeare's Richard II.


End file.
